Your Next Nerd Crush: "Thor's" Jaimie Alexander

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“Thor” actress Jaimie Alexander: soon to be a warrior goddess on screen, already a geek goddess off screen.

Alexander, who plays the superhero/thunder god’s Asgardian paramour Sif opposite Chris Hemsworth in next summer’s highly anticipated comic book adaptation, admits she was already well-studied in the world of Marvel Comics.

“I grew up with four brothers, so I was always into comic books,” she reveals, recalling her first meeting with legendary Thor writer-artist Walt Simonson. “I started to realize what these characters mean to people and it gave me this ability to create this stoic, powerful woman on screen.”

Keeping up with her male co-stars in the film’s rigorous physical training regimen was right up Alexander’s alley (she organized her high school’s first female wrestling team), but she had to keep the curves while getting cut.

“When I first got the part,” she remembers, “Kenneth Branagh came to me and said, 'Listen, everybody has to work out and get into shape, but if you start to get too thin we're going to make you stop working out. I don't want you skinny.

"It was great to hear that, because unfortunately in Hollywood you don't really hear that there is such a thing as too skinny. The guys at Marvel, they're not into the whole stick figure thing. And I'm not either!”

Despite intensive weapons training, Alexander says her fight skills aren’t entirely war-goddess level. “I should be able to take out anyone after all that training, but I'm naturally just insanely clumsy, so it took a lot of finesse and a lot of practice to make sure that I wasn't smacking someone in the face on accident – which I did twice! We had a great stunt team and they were very forgiving.”

Now she’s hoping to see die-hard fans in homemade Sif suits strolling the halls of Comic-Con.

“I love it!” Alexander says. “I think that there are so many worse things that someone could be interested in other than superheroes. It's better than being involved with drugs or guns and knives.”